Imagine if you could make money by writing about what you love. That's what blogging is all about. If you take the right steps you too could start a money making blog as a side hustle or to even replace your full time job! Learn how in this post.

Tired of your job? Looking for a new career? Maybe you’re just looking for extra money.

I’m going to show you how you could do any of the above. I’m going to show you today another way to make money. I’m going to show you how to start a blog.

I’m a bit partial to this method as this is the business I’ve chosen to do.

I love running this site. It’s been a real life changer for me. I look forward to working on the blog and simply don’t see it as “work” in the traditional sense.

Lots of people make money blogging. For some people, it’s lots of money and for others, not so much.

I know of people like Michelle of Making Sense of Cents who make over $100,000 per month and others who make $0. Just like any other business it’s what you make of it. I haven’t done a ton of monetizing on my blog, but I’m beginning to change that this year.

I’ll tell you this, it’s not a get rich business. It takes time to make money and you have to really love doing it, like any other business, to make money.

If you want to make some extra money or possibly even turn it into a full time business for you, blogging is totally an option.

1. CHOOSE A TOPIC FOR YOUR BLOG

What do you want to focus your blog on? You can blog pretty much about anything really.

Here are a few blog topics:

Personal Finance (Obviously this is the route I chose because I love learning and talking about money.)

Cooking

Travel

Parenting

Home Decor

These are just a few ideas. There really is an infinite number of possibilities. Pick something you really love to talk about.

2. CHOOSE A NICHE FOR YOUR BLOG TOPIC

To make sure your not just another blog on the same old topic, it really helps to create a specific niche. Make your topic very specific. This helps you to find a specific audience quickly.

Most people start too broad, including myself. When I started out, the blog was initially called Let’s Automate Your Life. It was way too broad. I was talking about life hacks, money hacks, automating your house, you name it.

It wasn’t working. I finally narrowed in on Personal Finance or Money and then narrowed it down even further to Money Advice for Millennials.

I knew exactly who I was talking too after that. No guessing.

3. CHOOSE YOUR BLOG HOSTING PLATFORM

When you start a blog, you want to be able to focus on the content and your business. That’s why it’s best to start with a hosting platform that takes out the technical challenges so you can focus on what is important.

Bluehost is a very affordable platform starting at only $3.95 per month. That includes your domain name (ie letsautomateyourmoney.com). They give you full access to Wordpress which is an amazing platform for bloggers and full support. It’s one of the best platforms for bloggers.

Shopify is another amazing platform. If you plan on selling lots of items, Shopify is built for ecommerce. It has a ton of features for creating an awesome ecommerce store. Of course, it also has built in blog features to make it easy to create your first blog. Shopify starts at $29 per month. It’s another great platform, but it is definitely geared towards ecommerce.

Squarespace is another platform for blogging and ecommerce. In fact, this site is hosted by Squarespace. Squarespace is another great blogging platform. They provide beautiful templates and design. They also provide ecommerce features for selling products as well. You can start with basic features for $16 per month.

I really enjoy Squarespace as my blog host but you really can’t go wrong with any of the above hosts. Bluehost is definitely the most popular platform for new bloggers due to it’s price and the Wordpress software.

4. WRITE CONTENT CONSISTENTLY ON YOUR BLOG

Once you have a platform and your blog is live. Write.

One thing I’ve learned over the years that I’ve been blogging is to write consistently. If I fall behind and don’t put up a new post for a while, people stop visiting the site. That’s not good…

Write valuable articles that help people out with problems. I tend to focus on helping people Make Money, Manage Money, and Invest Money. All my blog posts fall into one of those categories.

Most people recommend 1000+ words per blog post, but I’ve seen blogs that were successful with all different lengths. I try to shoot for 1,000 plus words, but I don’t always hit that number. Sometimes I will be so engrossed in the topic that I do a couple thousand words.

It really depends on how much there is to say about the topic.

Once you’ve written a post, it’s time to….

5. PROMOTE YOUR BLOG POSTS

You really don’t want to skimp on this. If you don’t try to promote your post it’s likely no one will ever read it.

The old saying, “create it and they will come,” does not apply to blogs.

Choose at least 1 social media platform to promote your posts. I highly recommend Pinterest. A good portion of my blog traffic comes from Pinterest. On top of that it’s a fun platform to use.

Pinterest

Share all your posts on Pinterest with a good pin image and description. Need a tool to make a Pinterest pin for your site? Try out Canva. It’s an awesome free tool you can use to create images for your blog.

There’s a lot to promoting a blog, but this is a good start. As you go, you’ll want to continue to improve your promotion efforts with other great tactics like guest posting and advertising.

6. COLLECT EMAIL ADDRESSES FROM READERS ON YOUR BLOG

After you promote your blog and people start visiting your site, you need a way to keep in touch with them. If someone clicks on a pin on Pinterest, browse your post, and then leave. You’ve lost them, likely forever.

The best way to keep that audience around is to collect their email address and stay in touch via email. Add an invite to your email list on every blog post. Even better, offer them something valuable in exchanged for joining your mailing list. AKA a lead magnet.

There are a few good tools to collect emails and allow you to email your readers easily.

Sumo is an awesome tool to collect emails and they have even begun to add tools to allow you email your list right from within Sumo. Best of all, it starts at the low price of FREE! Most of my email collection popups come from Sumo. I’m a big fan! :)

Convertkit is what I’ve been using as my email list host for some time. It starts at $29 per month, but has some great automation tools. I’d highly recommend it if you really want to get serious about your email list.

Mailchimp is another good option. They start out at free as well and now even have some automation features on their free plan.

Choose your favorite and go with it and then once you’ve got people on your email list, email them!

Once a week send out an email to keep them up to date on what’s going on with your blog and give them valuable info as much as possible. When it becomes time to sell something, you’ll have an audience of potential customers to launch to.

7. MONETIZE YOUR BLOG

Once you’ve got a consistently updated blog and have begun to build a following, it’s time to monetize your site to start making some money. There’s a ton of ways to make money from your blog. I’ll list out some of the most common options.

Advertising Sales

Yes, you can make money selling ad space on your site, but don’t expect much. Unless you have A LOT of people visiting your site every month, you probably won’t make much initially.

If you don’t mind ads on your site you could join an ad network. The easiest one to get started with is Google Adsense. It’s very easy to setup and once it’s been added it will show ads on your site where it thinks they will convert.

It’s a good way to make a trickle of income, but nothing crazy unless you have over 100,000 people visiting your site every month. If you get to that point, there are better ad networks out there to replace Google Adsense with.

I use Google Adsense but I don’t make much money at all with it. It’s not intrusive and a little is better than nothing so I’ve left it on the site for now.

Affiliate Marketing

I really like affiliate marketing. It’s basically advertising other people’s products on your own blog or in your emails. When readers click on the link from your site and buy that product, you get a commission. It can range from 5% to 50% depending on the product.

I actually have affiliate links in this post. It’s a great opportunity because I use a lot of different products and I love to share them with others. Why not make money while doing it? It costs the readers no extra money and they learn about a great new product that could help them. It’s a win – win situation.

An easy way to get started with affiliate marketing is Amazon’s Associate program. After you signup, they will provide you with special links that you can insert into your blog posts for all the products on Amazon.

If you have a specific product you love that’s not on Amazon and you want to share with your audience, do a quick search online to see if they have an affiliate program. You’ll probably be surprised to find out that many do.

Products

Now, this is the coolest way to make money on your blog in my opinion. I love to create, I love to teach, and I love to help other people. Creating a product allows me to do just that. Most of the money I’ve made on my blog comes from selling products.

When I first started, I created a course called Let’s Automate Your Money and it sold well for as small as my email list was, which was around 100. It focused too much on tech tools in that course and it quickly became outdated so I decided to create a new product called That Badass Money Handbook which wouldn’t become outdated so easily to replace it.

Find a problem that your audience is facing and create a solution or fix for that problem. That is what a good product is. It fixes a pain for your readers.

Make a ebook, course, merchandise, or anything else your readers would love to fix their problem.

Coaching

My final recommendation is coaching. If you like working one on one with people, coaching is a great way to make money on your blog.

Technology has made it easier to work with people over long distances. By hosting a Skype call for example, you can work one on one with someone at an hourly rate or designated fee.

Trading time for money is not always the best method, but it is a great way to get started.

8. TURN YOUR BLOG INTO A BUSINESS

Overtime you can turn your blog into a full-blown business. Just remember, it’s not a get rich quick type of business. You can definitely get rich. I’ve met people who make over $1,000,000 per year. I’ve met people who make $0 per year. It all depends on how much time and effort you put into it.

If you like the idea of starting your own blog and what to jump into it even further, check out the book, How to Blog for Profit by Ruth Soukop. This is a great book to help get you started in the world of blogging for profit.

How to Blog for Profit Without Selling Your Soul by Ruth Soukup

Now go and take action!

ACTION STEPS

Choose a topic for your blog.

Choose a niche for your blog topic.

Choose your blog hosting platform.

Write content consistently on your blog.

Promote your blog posts.

Collect email addresses from readers on your blog.

Monetize your blog.

Turn your blog into a business.

DAVID SHEPHERD

CREATOR OF LET'S AUTOMATE YOUR MONEY

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